Audition: Miike's Hour of Romance Before the Wire

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The most quoted thing about Audition is the sound, and if you have seen it you already heard it in your head reading that sentence — a bright, chirping, almost cheerful syllable repeated as a woman goes to work with a length of wire. Takashi Miike’s 1999 film has been filed for a quarter of a century under “extreme cinema”, shorthand for the final twenty minutes, and the filing does the film a quiet violence. Because the horror of Audition is not the wire. The horror is the hour of tenderness Miike builds before it, so carefully and so sincerely that the audience falls for the same trap the protagonist does.

Takashi Miike - vo.rs

Audition: Miike's Hour of Romance Before the Wire